A new beginning (of sorts)
WTF are Frontier Philosophies, anyway?
When I first started writing on Substack, I thought I wanted to explore business goals, habits, personal development. Things that 2ish years ago were weighing on my mind.
Today, I feel compelled to write about something different.
Over the past couple of years, as I’ve increasingly immersed myself in learning about and developing artificial intelligence, I’ve found myself circling the same frustration: the conversation around AI feels too narrow. Technical roadmaps. Corporate speak. Big declarations about “the future of work” that rarely seem to reflect the whole of society.
Again and again, I’ve gone looking for the intellectual work that should sit alongside all this - the thinking, theories and philosophical ideas we need to successfully navigate the shifts in power, society and culture we’re seeing as a result of AI. But I’ve come up short. Even where there are compelling academic studies on ethical or responsible AI, they largely remain within academia; discussed at symposiums but rarely reaching the private developers, policymakers or joe public that need to hear them the most.
So I decided to start exploring this myself. Frontier Philosophies are needed for society to stand a chance against frontier AI models. This publication is where I’ll explore the ideas, theories, and questions that are keeping me up at night. My hope is to spark discussion, not just for technologists or policymakers, but for all of us.
This is how I’ll explore that work here:
The nerdy ones - deep dives into the technical edges of AI. The developments that are exciting me across distributed AI, data sovereignty, small language models, tinyML and more.
Thought experiments - cross-domain explorations, pulling ideas from philosophy, economics, or culture. Sometimes about AI, always about what it fundamentally means to be human.
Thinking in public - rough sketches and half-formed takes, working ideas out on the page. I wholeheartedly reserve the right to change my mind completely on anything I posit.
The new commons - essays on equity, ownership, and governance. These are the articles where I’ll be exploring the intersection of AI, power and society.
Some essays will be sharp and technical, some broad and speculative, some unfinished but honest. My hope is that over time they’ll map the Frontier Philosophies we’ll need if AI is to serve everyone, not just its makers.
I’ll publish about twice a month. If you’ve been here from the start, thank you for staying with me as my writing evolves. If you’re new, welcome! Subscribe to get each essay direct to your inbox and be part of a growing community that believes AI’s future is too important to leave in the hands of a few.
- Laura